270 Reasons: Because I Want the American Experiment to Continue
Our friends at 270 Reasons are gathering a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, artists, and citizens of all kinds to weigh in about their plans to vote this November. These opinion essays run the gamut from advocacy for basic human rights to acutely personal mini-manifestoes. Read the rest over at 270 Reasons.
H4. Because I Want the American Experiment to Continue
I’m voting for the Harris-Walz ticket because I want to see the American experiment continue: democratic process, free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of power, and the rule of law. They are not “issues” with rational counterarguments and reasonable opposing sides. They’re the bedrock of our nation. We’ve seen the alternatives. January 6th told us all we need to know about the national mutation that the failed dictator and his supporters would bring forth. History has made clear that every wannabe strongman is a weak man devoid of ideas, beyond the singular need to retain power through intimidation, suppression, and violence. The American experiment is imperfect, variable, aspirational, and ongoing, and it’s the latter that makes it exceptional. The American experiment reaches again and again, imagines anew with each generation, and writes bolder, more audacious stories about what it means to be free, to live within the sanctuary of liberty, and to be truly inclusionary and equal. The American experiment gets closer to its ideals through community organizing, through protest marches and demonstrations, through kitchen-table debates, and with each vote cast for visions of what it means to be a strong, compassionate nation. If you’re reading this and still think that not voting for Harris-Walz is a means of protest, please consider that it’s the worst protest tactic of all. Especially in a tight election and given the dictator-in-waiting, it also may be your last act of protest. Please don’t squander the hard-won right to vote, don’t stay at home when generations of Americans have put their lives and livelihoods on the line to guarantee you the right that they and their elders didn’t have, and please don’t deny yourself, your family, your community, and folks like me the ability to see the American experiment persist and morph from ideals to viable ideas.
Monique Truong is a novelist, essayist, and librettist.
Read more essays (with new ones added every day) at 270reasons.com.
The arguments here represent the opinion of the authors and not necessarily those of the McSweeney’s Literary Arts Fund.